I Can Name That Tune In Ten Taps

Stumped for the song title of a tune that you can't get out of your head?

Try the "The Song Tapper".

I ran across a reference to this bizarre little site on Dave Barry's page.

It gives you a short list of songs (in order of probability) based on your tapping the song's rhythm on your spacebar.

I tried it and out of five songs, it listed my song at the top twice. "Yellow Submarine" by the Beatles and "Who Can It Be, Now" by Men at Work. Still that's not bad for the millions of songs that are out there and my rudimentary tapping skills.

Pretty strange.

Quote Me on This

Here is a nice little site for quotes from famous authors. I've listed some of the ones I enjoyed the most below. Any quips of mine are listed parenthetically in red italics.

"There are two kinds of writer: those that make you think, and those that make you wonder."
- Brian Aldiss

"Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil - but there is no way around them."
- Isaac Asimov (don't you just love IA?)

"If you write one story, it may be bad; if you write a hundred, you have the odds in your favor."
- Edgar Rice Burroughs (no truer words...)

"The reason 99% of all stories written are not bought by editors is very simple. Editors never buy manuscripts that are left on the closet shelf at home."
- John Campbell

"I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil."
- Truman Capote (if only I believed)

"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."
- Willa Cather

"I've always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties."
- Agatha Christie (Thank you, Agatha. We appreciate your faith in us. Love, Pearce & Story)

"Never throw up on an editor."
- Ellen Datlow (of all the advice, this is probably the best I've read)

"Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good."
- William Faulkner

"Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at."
- David Gerrold

"Half my life is an act of revision."
- John Irving (I know the feeling)

"Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."
- Franklin Jones (that about sums it up as long as he includes dead people)

"The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story."
- Ursula K. Le Guin

"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (which is great for the reader but oh so unfortunate for the writer)

"We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to."
- Somerset Maugham (think I've heard this one before)

"If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write."
- Somerset Maugham (Somerset has some good quotes, I must say)

"There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write."
- Terry Pratchett (TP is hilarious)

"Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none."
- Jules Renard (hopefully no one notices me slipping this one in here)

"Engrave this in your brain: EVERY WRITER GETS REJECTED. You will be no different."
- John Scalzi (good to know, better to believe)

"Like everyone else, I am going to die. But the words--the words live on for as long as there are readers to see them, audiences to hear them. It is immortality by proxy. It is not really a bad deal, all things considered."
- J. Michael Straczynski (y'know, J. Michael Straczynski is writing the Amazing Spider-Man comic these days)

"The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible."
- Mark Twain (boy, he had a way with words)

"No one can write decently who is distrustful of the reader's intelligence or whose attitude is patronizing."
- E. B. White

You can read a lot of other quotes at the site if you have the time. Hope you enjoyed some of these. And one day, you're going to find Ken Story's name after quotes like these -- mark my words!!!

Writing

A Lyric FOR the Day

Monday you can fall apart
Tuesday Wednesday break my heart
Thursday doesn't even start
It's Friday I'm in love

Saturday wait
And Sunday always comes too late
But Friday never hesitate...

I don't care if Monday's black
Tuesday Wednesday heart attack
Thursday never looking back
It's Friday I'm in love

-- Friday I'm in Love, The Cure

The Cure

That Thing You Do

What are some of your favorite One-Hit Wonders? These can be semi-current to way back in the rock and roll archives. Some of the more recent ones that come to mind are:

"The Freshmen" by The Verve Pipe
"Counting Blue Cars" by Dishwalla
"I Get Knocked Down" by Chumbawamba

In the 90s, a couple of the more prominent ones I remember were:

"Achy Breaky Heart" by Billy Ray Cyrus
"I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something
"Everything Falls Apart" by Dog's Eye View

In the 80s, I remember:

"Pop Muzik" by M
"Funkytown" by Lipps, Inc.
"I Melt With You" by Modern English
"Come On Eileen" by Dexy's Midnight Runners

just to name a few. I actually remember a ton of them from the 80s, but these may help you out.

The 70s had:

"One Toke Over the Line" by Brewer & Shipley
"Precious and Few" by Climax
"Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks
"Kung Fu Fighting" by Carl Douglas
"Shannon" by Henry Gross

and I'll stop at the late 60s with:

"Summertime Blues" by Blue Cheer
"Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" by Steam

You got good ones and you got bad ones, but everybody can think of some. What are some of your favorites? And, as always, you can detail why if you so choose.

One-Hit Wonders

The Scarcest Resource

Playing off Ken's Alton Gansky post, I thought this comment by Jack Cavanaugh was very insightful and totally true of writing:

The swiftness with which time passes while writing can be scary at times too. When I'm writing, time flashes by, and with it go huge portions of my life. Which means the more I write, the more swiftly I'm racing to my death. The tradeoff, hopefully, is leaving behind a legacy of stories that will continue to live long after I'm gone. This isn't the kind of thing aspiring writers want to hear, but it comes with the territory.

Boy, no kidding. I'll be flowing in a chapter, or worse - struggling with one, and what had been ten o'clock p.m. has turned to three thirty a.m., and I'll have to be getting up for work in three and a half hours. Jack's dead to right on the trade-off as well, and that's hard to fathom for non-published writers (or even soon-to-be published writers like us). The desire to have a body of work at the end of a life to at least give the illusion that all the time spent was worth the opportunity costs... well, that's why writers write. It's also achieved by only a rare few.

If I got anything out of my BSEC degree at Auburn University, the notion of opportunity costs probably topped the list. All the other valuable, invaluable, or not-so-valuable things I could be doing with my time instead of what I'm choosing to do. For me, at least at this point where I don't have writing deadlines over my head - sometimes I do have job deadlines - the way I live with the trade is sacrificing sleep (and sometimes health), mostly, for writing. The time after work with my family, and especially with my children, is too valuable for me to simply disappear into my study to write. Sometimes sacrificing lunches or a couple hours on the weekend away from the family, I'll live with, but other than that, it's got to be sleep. Not to mention, my best writing hours tend to be between 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.

More important than just to my writing or to any one thing that anyone does is the point I'm trying to get to, which is: TIME is really our most precious resource. When you think about it, we have money, material items, health, faith, hope, and love, friends, etc., but without time, none of it means anything. In fact, when it comes right down to it, time is all that we have in this fallen world. And we live on borrowed time. I realize I'm not breaking any new ground here - people have figured this out long before any of it dawned on me, but I feel impelled to write it. Probably because I hijack so much of my own by wasting it. Maybe someone else can benefit from my folly.

Our choices and everything we do must fit into the time that we have. Whether we love, hate, give, provide, play, argue, debate, work, enjoy, mourn, hurt, pursue passions (good and bad), relax, travel, achieve, educate, ail -- whatever we do, it all has to be within the time we have. Best then, if we use what we have wisely. And since each person has a different make-up, I believe that using time wisely is going to be different for each person.

If we had started our blog early enough, one of Ken's news oddities of the week may have been about a kid in Korea who went to a gaming center and played for 52 straight hours, even through calls from his mom, until he up and died from a heart attack after the 52nd hour. I've got an X-Box at home, and I work with people with similar gaming devices. This guy was sort of a joke at our work. How could a person be so stupid? Well, truth to tell, I'm probably not really that different. I could easily see myself getting caught up - actually I do get caught up in these basically pointless games when playing them either with my kids or by myself. And the hours just tick-tock, tick-tock by. More hours when I didn't write, or read God's word/pray, love my wife, watch my kids grow before my eyes, feed anyone, do anything for anyone except myself. Now, sometimes I need a diversion to unwind. Games, sports (playing or watching), blogging, or just vegging come to mind as things I do for that necessity. But I've got to watch myself. And it doesn't have to be games. It can be sports, movies, running, walking, sleeping, working, working out, being at church, reading, writing, and uh, notably sinful things... I can get caught up in a ton of things where I'm really wasting time because they're not what I really should be doing.

What I have to do is, I've got to factor in what the Will of God is for me -- as part of the Church, as part of my church, as a husband and father, and as an individual, and (I'm going to give myself this one) as a writer. There is so, so, sooooo much that I fail at, and if I listed my sins, it would require another couple or dozen blog sites -- but I'm not sure I have a greater sin than the monumental waste of time that, for the most part, I've lived. Instead of worrying about all that though, I've got to focus on Christ and go from there. It's extremely (I really can't put it into words) difficult for me to do this. I love myself so much, and I really don't mind wasting time on myself. But Christ is King, not me.

So at least I've come to the realization. Like I said, since I'm not breaking any new ground, I figure most people have a pretty good concept of this for themselves. But then, sometimes it's therapeutic for me to let my thoughts bubble out into this blog. So I've done it again. I've turned what started out to be a thoughtful and thought-out post into a diary of my personal crap. Too bad for the reader, I guess. I do apologize, but I'm also posting, because I still haven't learned Ken's Poopy-Doopy lesson.

Wow. It's early morning, and I already feel like I need a beer.

Time

Game Time

Alright, how about a little post the whole family can enjoy? From the lists below, what are your favorite board games and why?

Classic Games
1) Aggravation
2) Battleship
3) Clue
4) Life
5) Monopoly
6) Parcheesi
7) Payday
8) Scrabble
9) Sorry
10) Yahtzee

Strategy/War Games
1) Axis & Allies
2) Chess
3) Diplomacy
4) Pente
5) Risk
6) Stratego
7) War at Sea

Children's Games
1) Candyland
2) Chutes & Ladders
3) Cranium Cadoo
4) Monopoly Junior
5) Operation
6) Trivial Pursuit, Junior Edition (or Kid's Edition)
7) Trouble

Sports Games
1) All-Star Baseball
2) Bas-Ket Game
3) ESPN All-Star Sports Trivia Challenge
4) Monopoly MIAMI DOLPHINS Collector's Edition
5) NASCAR DVD Board Game
6) Statis-Pro Baseball
7) Statis-Pro Football

Party Games
1) A to Z
2) Battle of the Sexes Card Game
3) Charades
4) Cranium
5) Loaded Questions
6) Outburst
7) Pictionary
8) TriBond
9) Trivial Pursuit
10) Other

Game Show Games
1) American Idol
2) Concentration
3) Family Feud
4) Jeopardy Board Game
5) The Newlywed Game
6) Password
7) Pictionary
8) The Price Is Right
9) Pyramid
10) Wheel of Fortune

(Anytime we can get a nice picture of Donny Osmond on a post, I think the post is well worth it. Dont' you?)

Mystery Games
1) 221 B Baker Street
2) Bakerstreet
3) Clue
4) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - The Board Game
5) any of the interactive Murder Mystery games

Please, somebody stop me. Enough of the fun 'n games already!!!

Anyhoo, which games are your favorites to play on family night? What's your all time favorite? And the most important question of all: What all games have I missed???

Per the usual, my answers will appear sooner or later in the comments.

Board Games

A Lyric of the Day I Can Sneak by Ken

And I love when folks look right at me
And what I'm doing or have done
And lay it on about how groovy I am
And that I'm looking grand

And every single word makes me think
I'll live forever never knowing
That they probably won't remember what they said
Tomorrow, tomorrow I could be dead

The lust, the flesh
The eyes
And the pride of life
Drain the life
Right out of me

-- The Lust, the Flesh, the Eyes, and the Pride of Life, The 77s

The 77s

Know Your Shakespeare #2

Calling all lovers of Will from Avon. Name the Shakespearian play which this scene comes from.

Bonus points for identifying either of the well-known actors shown performing above.
Hint: In the past, one has played a boy and the other a hood.

Answers on Friday. And, as always, please no wagering.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Congratulations to Doug for correctly identifying "As You Like It". And two bonus points for recognizing Richard "John Boy" Thomas as Touchstone.

However, the other actor is Brian Bedford, who among other movie and TV roles was the voice of Robin Hood in the animated Disney classic by the same name.

I guess his voice might have been a little difficult to pick up in the photo, but hey, it was a bonus.

As You Like It

Rollcall

Am I the only one here in cyberspace? It's 8:08 p.m., and I just noticed that I'm the only one who has commented or posted today. Wow. It's lonely being me. Maybe I need to travel to some different blogs just to correspond with actual people. More likely, I need to generate some livelier posts.

All this after I missed half the day taking my younger son to a doc-in-the-box because his regular pediatrician is off on Wednesdays. Turns out, (like my oldest) he has contracted strep throat. Also, he has a nasal/sinus infection, bronchitis, and two ear infections. Now, that's good parenting, I have to say -- letting your kid degenerate to that before getting him to his pediatrician. Well, now we have the fun of trying to force-feed Augmentin and some other cough antibiotic down his gullet. Or trick him. It's fun watching him wretching a dozen times just thinking about the medicine he's holding in his hand. Actually, it's not fun at all.

Back to the point, is anyone out there? I'm thinking we need to take the moderation button off. Then, maybe people will feel a little more free.

Oh well, to all a good night!

About Friends

Over at Doug's blog (that's Dugalug around here), he's got an excellent post on friendship. Here are some of the high points for me:

My theory is that my best friends are not the ones that are there all of the time, but the ones that are there when I need them most.

True friends are concerned with giving, not taking. You don't keep tallies any longer because it doesn't matter. You can be separated from true friends for months, years even, get together and it will seem like time has just stood still. True friends scratch deeper than the surface when they ask how you are doing because they really want to know and help if they can. True friends don't expect much, but are just as happy to be around you as you are around them.

God's tally sheet is simple: we owe Him everything, and we deserve judgment.

In prayer time, I am trying to make an effort to verbalize my feelings on issues in my life, rather than always asking and thanking God for His hand in my life. I do this with my best friends, why wouldn't I do this with God?

The reality is that all friendships are somewhat lopsided, but that shouldn't matter one bit. We can never repay God for His love, mercy, and grace shown to us through Jesus, yet God is our friend, and He has no tally sheet to those cleansed in the Blood of Jesus.

To me, these are gems, and they express more eloquently than I could what true friendship is and what it means. Thanks for a great post over there, Doug. Keep it up.

Oh, and just for the record, even though I was a friend of Doug's in college, his paragraph:

In college, I had a friend who would call me, and the conversation was exactly the same every time. It would go something like: 'Hello Doug?... How are you doing?... That's great! Listen, I was wondering if I could get you to do __________ for me?!'.

although I'm sure it sounds like me, it wasn't about me. I probably wasn't far from it, though.

Anyway, college was a rough and tumultuous (although fun, too) period of my life, and Doug stuck with me as only a true friend could and would during my personal heaven and hell tour back then. So when he speaks on friendship, I listen, and I think it would be great if anyone reading this clicked on over to his blog to read the whole piece. It's flat good.

Friendship